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Joe -:- Don't You Love the Guardian? -:- Thurs, Dec 27, 2001 at 15:40:02 (EST) |
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__ John Macgregor -:- small correction -:- Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 08:16:46 (EST) |
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__ __ Nigel -:- Ohmigod, he's right! -:- Wed, Jan 02, 2002 at 00:33:27 (EST) |
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__ __ Marshall -:- astrology is ridiculous -:- Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 11:19:25 (EST) |
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__ such -:- a scathing article! 93 Rolls Royces? -:- Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 00:53:27 (EST) |
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__ __ Francesca -:- **J-M NOTE: ARTICLE FOR EPO*** [nt] -:- Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 15:43:17 (EST) |
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__ Nigel -:- Yes - best of the bunch.. -:- Thurs, Dec 27, 2001 at 17:27:02 (EST) |
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__ __ Joe -:- Frances Wheen -:- Thurs, Dec 27, 2001 at 17:56:15 (EST) |
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__ __ __ Nigel -:- Re: Francis Wheen -:- Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 04:01:34 (EST) |
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__ Pat:C) -:- Re: Don't You Love the Guardian? -:- Thurs, Dec 27, 2001 at 16:17:42 (EST) |
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Thorin -:- More Cainer Stuff -:- Mon 5/13/2002 at 04:44:34 (EDT) |
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Date: Thurs, Dec 27, 2001 at 15:40:02 (EST) |
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Date: Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 08:16:46 (EST) |
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Date: Wed, Jan 02, 2002 at 00:33:27 (EST) |
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Date: Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 11:19:25 (EST) |
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Date: Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 00:53:27 (EST) |
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Date: Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 15:43:17 (EST) |
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Date: Thurs, Dec 27, 2001 at 17:27:02 (EST) |
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Date: Thurs, Dec 27, 2001 at 17:56:15 (EST) |
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Date: Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 04:01:34 (EST) |
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Date: Thurs, Dec 27, 2001 at 16:17:42 (EST) |
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Date: Mon, May 13, 2002 at
04:44:34 (EDT) Attached Link: Cainer on Drek Site Whilst posting the helicopter stuff for Mirror down below I also have some additional articles on the 'Cainer Saga' which may not have been posted before (if they have apologies). In any event makes for light reading - like 'Mills and Boon' Have posted the full 14 July 1999 Guardian article but scroll down to where Cainer stuff starts. Also see linked stuff on Drek's site which gives more context of how Cainer fits into all this. ------------------------------------ 1,402 words 14 July 1999 The Guardian English (c) 1999 I was due to appear on Question Time last Thursday. A couple of weeks ago, however, one of the producers rang to say that a `special guest' would be replacing me. Tony Blair (for it was he) duly came off the substitutes' bench and, before the evening was out, had promised to outlaw fox-hunting `as soon as we possibly can'. Aneurin Bevan used to say that the language of socialism is the language of priorities, and for many people the welfare of foxy-whiskered predators seems a far higher priority than such trifling sideshows as poverty, education, health or public transport. Never mind that Blair's pledge was manifestly a ploy to redeem himself in the eyes of those Labour voters whom he had gratuitously offended only two days earlier with his sneers at public-sector workers. We are assured by Downing Street's busy spin-merchants that the PM has always hated hunting, and that his remarks though unexpected were wholly sincere. If so, why did he embellish them with such palpable fibs about Mike Foster's private member's bill? `We had one try last session ... I voah-ed for it,' he said, employing the glottal stop usually reserved for his chummy performances on the Des O'Connor Show or Richard And Judy. A glance at Hansard reveals that the prime minister did not voah at the second reading of the Wild Mammals (Hunting With Dogs) Bill in November 1997, nor at its report stage and third reading in March last year. `It was blocked by Conservatives in the House of Commons and in the Lords,' Blair continued. `One of the reasons we are reforming the House of Lords is that a whole lot of her-editary peers can be brought out of the woodwork to defeat a bill that many people support.' This is a veritable banquet of bollocks: testicle terrine followed by grilled gonad and rounded off with bollock brulee. The Foster bill never even reached the Lords. What killed it was the refusal of the government Tony Blair's government to provide the necessary parliamentary time. `I do not see a role for government,' Jack Straw announced on the eve of the third reading, explaining why Foster could expect no official help. `I am well aware there are strong opinions on this, but it is not uppermost in the minds of the majority of the population.' Having already changed his mind on private prisons, trial by jury and much else, Straw may get terminal indigestion if he has to eat any more of his words. Like Tony Blair, I dislike hunting. But is it any more objectionable than other blood sports? `Let those whose preferred sport is with shotgun or fishing rod be under no illusion,' the Daily Telegraph warned its readers last Saturday. `The bell that tolls for hunting will toll for them.' Labour MPs insist that this is untrue, and for once I believe them. `I shall state now, and repeat whenever necessary, that the bill does not extend to shooting and angling,' Mike Foster told the Commons in 1997. As well he might: for all his pious disapproval of `cruelty and barbarism in the name of sport', Foster is himself a veteran coarse-fisherman who has often inflicted unnecessary suffering on hapless carp purely for his own gratification. FM Cornford's famous Principle of the Wedge holds that `you should not act justly now for fear of raising expectations that you will act still more justly in the future'. He meant it satirically, of course a point overlooked by those who argued that Nato's failure to defend the people of Rwanda or East Timor somehow disqualified it from intervening in Kosovo. (In the words of another Cornfordism, the Principle of the Dangerous Precedent: `Nothing should ever be done for the first time.') Even so, any precedent does indeed raise expectations that its logic will be followed through in comparable cases. Why, then, does Tony Blair's moral compassion not extend to those poor fishy-wishies who are hauled out of gravel pits with vicious hooks in their mouths? Mike Foster gave the game away when he turned up for his second-reading debate brandishing a fluffy toy fox a stunt that John Prescott gleefully repeated this week. Mr and Mrs Reynard are cutey-pies who must therefore be protected (though, of course, they won't be protected at all, merely shot or gassed). But you will search the shelves of Hamleys in vain for a cuddly little perch or tench. Until our piscine pals start growing fur, they can expect no mercy. Banning hunting like hunting itself is not only a trivial pursuit but also an infantile disorder. Yet we now learn that Labour intends to make this issue `the heart of its campaign' in the Eddisbury byelection. As the Guardian reported on Monday: `Party chiefs believe there is strong opposition to the sport in the Cheshire constituency, which is home to the Cheshire Hunt.' If they want to prove that hunting is the preserve of reactionary, half-witted toffs, these party chiefs could hardly choose a less appropriate place. The most distinguished former member of the Cheshire Hunt was a lifelong Marxist who described fox-hunting as `the best school of all' for serious revolutionaries. His name? Frederick Engels. The Daily Mail seems to have appointed itself as the official newspaper of the solar eclipse. Not content with chartering a ship and a plane from which a lucky few competition-winners can witness the event, the paper is also offering an Eclipse Horoscope by `Britain's foremost astrologer', Jonathan Cainer. Mail executives must have forgotten what happened the last time a group of simpletons failed to notice the difference between astronomy and astrology, when the appearance of the Hale-Bopp comet in 1997 prompted members of the Heaven's Gate sect in San Diego to commit mass suicide. The Daily Mail denounced the dead cultists as `freaks' whose `bizarre gospel' that salvation could be found in a comet reflected an `obsession with the stars which was a throwback to thousands of years ago'. Jonathan Cainer, however, described Hale-Bopp as `a herald ... that undoubtedly signifies imminent worldwide change on an impressive scale'. Two years on, he is making identical claims for the eclipse: `It heralds the start of change, on an unparalleled scale, for the whole world'. This Cainer is a man who needs watching. Although the Daily Mail is proud of its record in exposing sinister cults that brainwash converts and break up families, as proved by its epic 101-day libel battle against the Moonies in 1981, it seems unaware that its own astrologer is a devotee of just such a cult. The object of Cainer's veneration is the Guru Maharaj Ji, who came to the west as a tubby 13-year-old in the early 1970s and persuaded thousands of ex-hippies to join his Divine Light Mission. Such was his appeal that by the end of the decade he owned 93 Rolls-Royces and had run up a $4m bill for back-taxes. In those days the guru described himself as the Lord of the Universe and the Exploding Love-Bomb. Since then, the Divine Light Mission has changed its name to Elan Vital, and its leader now prefers to be known as Maharaji, Perfect Master. But his methods and lifestyle remain the same: when not touring the world in his $25m Gulfstream private jet, exploding love-bombs all over the faithful, he retreats to a vast Malibu mansion, nursing his duodenal ulcer and counting his loot. Rather coyly, Jonathan Cainer never mentions the guru in his Daily Mail column. In cyberspace, however, he is less discreet: he runs a website (www.enjoyinglife.org) devoted to the cult, and in April this year he travelled all the way to Malaysia merely to hear one of Maharaji's speeches. `There are so many newspapers and magazines,' the Perfect Master told his audience. `Imagine if one of them just said: `Everything is fine ... go and enjoy yourself and don't waste your time.' Even if that newspaper sold just one copy it would be a worthwhile exercise to print it.' On his website, Cainer describes this idea as `magnificent'. Maybe he should suggest it to the Daily Mail. ------------------------------------------------------ By Jonathan Cainer. 16 July 1999 The Guardian English (c) 1999 Francis Wheen appears to be suggesting (The Mail man, the Maharaji and the exploding love bomb, G2, July 14) that I am about to invite readers of my newspaper to participate in a mass suicide. I know that the Guardian is keen to improve its monthly circulation. The annihilation of a few thousand Daily Mail readers would no doubt help greatly in this endeavour. Nonetheless, I feel that this is taking wishful thinking a tad too far. I do not belong to any cult, astrological or otherwise. I do have a keen interest in the world of a teacher called Maharaji but I am not his (or anyone else's) devotee. Nor do I recognise the person in the picture you printed. The Maharaji that I know does not have 93 Rolls Royces, nor has he ever described himself as an `exploding love bomb'. I cannot tell you whether or not he is has a duodenal ulcer but it looks very much to me as if you are getting him mixed up with someone else. Jonathan Cainer Daily Mail. ------------------------------------------------------------ 21 July 1999 The Guardian English (c) 1999 Jonathan Cainer, the Daily Mail's resident stargazer, has taken umbrage at my suggestion that he is a devotee of Maharaji, the tubby preacher who used to call himself the Guru Maharaj Ji. Why, then, does he maintain a large website devoted to the old boy? `I'm a keen aficionado of Maharaji's work and his message,' Cainer explains, in a `very personal statement' posted on the website replying to my article last week. `But I really have to reject that devotion notion. It implies some kind of religious faith and if this is a religion or faith, that's the first I have heard of it in my 20-odd years of involvement.' Tut tut: Cainer clearly hasn't been paying attention. Maharaji himself dealt with the `devotion notion' when addressing more than 50,000 followers in New Delhi on April 13 1991: `What has a devotee to become? A devotee has to become a receptacle. And what has a disciple to become? A disciple too has to become a receptacle. Whatever you name him, he is meant to be a vessel, meant to be empty ... You have to turn to the Master and pray to him to give you prudence - `Maharaji, please give me wisdom ... If my attention is diverted somewhere else, O my Lord, please call me back to you ... I do not know what is good for me. But you know best.' Cainer says Maharaji has never claimed to be `some kind of divinity'. In fact, he has often done just that. Interviewed by the Divine Times newspaper in February 1973, he described himself as `the Supremest Lord in person'. In February 1982 he advised aficionados that `by yourself you cannot do anything, but I can do everything ... I am the law, in which rests the movement of the stars and the growth of each living cell'. At another New Delhi rally, on November 9 1990, he announced that `the guru is such a personality about whom it is said: `I bow down to the lotus-feet of my Guru Maharaji, who is the ocean of mercy and is actually Hari (God) himself in human form.' Since then, Maharaji has been more cautious, presenting himself merely as a Master of Meditation. But I have it on the best possible authority that he hasn't changed his views: only last Saturday, the Maharaji assured a crowd in Barcelona that his message `is always the same'. How could Cainer fail to notice? I can only assume that he has been too busy admiring the fragrant lotus-feet of the editor of the Daily Mail. |